


A History of the Innernets

by rayoflight



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kink Discovery, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayoflight/pseuds/rayoflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jennifer Mills buys Ichabod a laptop.  Abbie gets curious enough about his online activities that when opportunity presents itself, she does some snooping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was Jenny who thought it would be a good idea to get Ichabod his own laptop.  A simple one, little more than a cheap tablet with a keyboard, with apps he disdained and a default browser he used often…

Or at least viewed often, over Abbie’s shoulder.  

She got it second-hand from “the Amazons” for a steal, a bundled, refurbed, model for all of thirty-nine dollars.

At first he fussed over it and frowned at it disapprovingly, for being tiny, full of ceaseless programming pop-ups _I did not ask to be reminded to update anything, I am satisfied with the state of the device as is!_ , and “obsolete” but eventually, Abbie was shocked to find he’d grown comfortable with the device.

She often found him furiously correcting some historical entry on wikipedia filling it with unverifiable facts that only he, as a witness to those events would know, only to fluster and fuss about a site notice appearing later informing him that his ISP had been locked out due to inaccurate edits.

He complained that he couldn’t “game” on this limited model, but then she found him once, up late at night in the archives his eyes red with strain staring at the screen while new-age music blared and a mysterious deep baritone intoned “Go.”.

He was on level 82 of Bejeweled.

Then, there was the time he had suffered a horrible migraine and Abbie drove him home to the cabin early during her lunch break to it rest it off.   She stocked him up with Excedrin, turned off all the lights and managed to get get him into bed.

She checked on him, via a phone call later that day and found him in much better spirits, and headache-free, though still exhausted.

It wasn’t until her shift was over that she realized he’d forgotten his laptop.

There it was, sitting among the old dusty tomes they’d used so often during their supernatural cases.

Abbie stood and blinked at it for a moment, before curious feet brought her to seat herself in front of it. She opened it and the screen alit with an icon of George Washington.

She huffed and muttered ‘ _hypocritical slave-owner_ ’ to herself before turning her attention to the empty box beneath, prompting for a password.

“Hmm.”

She frowned at the blinking cursor for a minute before typing in:  

_George Washington._

“Nope.”

_His father’s name._

“That’s not it…”

_His mother’s...Jeremy...Witness Two...2..._

_Fistbump._

“No…”

She tried his birthday and every favored food item and historical name he claimed as friend before finally an odd feeling of inspiration settled over her and she typed in:

_Grace._

The home screen lit up.

* * *

Did she feel guilty for snooping?  A little bit, but considering his constant complaints about the inferiority of the stuff gifted to him, the guilt was _very small_ , indeed.

She opened his browser and checked his bookmarks: _Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, a messageboard for historians, a subreddit for people with eidetic memories, the official online space for the Sleepy Hollow Historical Reenactors' Society (he’d left a nice comment on a memorial page for Caroline), “the best fencing match ever!!” on youtube, StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Welcome to Night Vale, and The Occult Encyclopedia_ , among a few others.

All pretty much expected…and then she took a turn.

It started innocently enough.

She had wanted to get an idea of some of his other food favorites, perhaps even a few recipes from his time she could surprise him with, so she starting typing food.

Autocomplete filled in “porn”.  The first few purple links were innocent enough, food blogs and social network pages with high-quality photos of gourmet meals, but then she scrolled…

One of the purple links was for decidedly triple-x material.

She clicked the link.  

A pigtailed blonde woman who looked to be in her thirties, made up to look to like a teen (with breast implants and a spray tan) stripped down to a thong and sprayed whipped cream on her breasts. She began to lick her own nipples, -an impressive task considering how difficult it seemed to even move the things...

Abbie cleared her throat and clicked on the search window. It expanded to several links from the same website. She knew she was going down a rabbit hole, but she couldn’t stop… She was at the point of no return.  

Abbie knew next-to-nothing about Crane’s sexual leanings.  He had them, of course, and she caught him admiring some lovely scenery, so-to-speak, but never any outright gawking, no invasive comments. He was a gentleman of his time and a scholar. She doubted there even was a 18th century equivalent of street harassment in his circle.

 _...Likely, they just purchased whatever access they felt curious about from sex workers or the worst among them presumed access from women of “low birth”_ , she thought with an unpleasant little shiver. 

He teased and flirted with her of course, but always in a way that made her smile and feel uplifted, never intrusively so.  He simply did not speak of those things with any depth or intent; _certainly_ not with her.   _A person of her calibre and sex should not be subjected to such things_ , he had said once when they were both dealing with a violent supernatural sex crime case.  

She raised her eyebrows at him, informed him that it was _her job_ and her “sex” would make her insights all the more valued for understanding the mindset of the victim. He cleared his throat through an apology, all pink-cheeks and fluttery fingers,  genuinely chastised for having unintentionally insulted her.

That was one thing she did enjoy about Ichabod that she found rare in modern men, he was incredibly mindful of the appropriate address and wording especially when in company he respected, which always included women of every age, occupation, disposition, and hue...He would be mortified to offend or disrespect someone. A consequence of those things carrying greater importance in the circles of his time, she gathered.

Though, she was sure he had indulged, she was also sure he was living like a monk, currently.  She would bet her right arm that he hadn’t had sex with anyone since his wife and barely even that, when she was with him for those brief tumultuous months, in this time.  She had a couple one night stands she did her best to keep from him, with Luke and Calvin, respectively.

That he had been married and even had a son, meant that he did have sex, at least once...and he _had been_ obsessed with finding her and keeping her for a time, even to the point of stupidity.

Abbie was positively fascinated by the prospect of discovering the deeply hidden desires of one Ichabod Crane, and just a tiny bit afraid of what she might find… _What if he liked scat?! or worse, brony porn?!_   She had read things about those wild Colonials, after-all. There probably was a higher incidence of sexualizing ponies in those days, owing to the prevalence and reliance on them, after all...

Well, she was already down the rabbit hole.

Time to eat and drink…

She clicked on one of the links.

* * *

**  
**

_An 18th century setting, nubile young white pair of pros in costume, and a vaseline covered lens…_ She breathed a sigh of relief.

Standard and _entirely_ expected.

She watched the whole scene. It was unexpectedly hot, even with the powdered wig and obviously non-era-appropriate shorn pubic hair and body enhancements.  They were enthusiastic to the point that there costumes were reduced to shreds.  She suddenly understood why the slang for erotic novels was “bodice-rippers”.

She clicked on another link.

Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open.  It was another pro production...Some kind of action set-up.

A pair of harrowing lovers post-peril.   

Both were dirty, wearing combat gear, and hidden in some kind of bunker.  That wasn’t what startled her, though...well, _not all_.  

The female talent was a petite black woman.

There was the barest resemblance  if you squinted, ignored her long sharp fingernails, glamour weave, pound of makeup, and facial features.

Size, shape, and coloring were pretty darn close, though.

Abbie was like a deer in headlights. She was unable to do anything but watch. It was… _well-done_ for what it was. Both actors were eager and flexible, she noticed.

They finished and she blinked a few times, trying to wrap her brain around a fact she realized, really shouldn’t surprise her at all.  Pretty much every straight guy fantasizes about the women in his life, friends, acquaintances, enemies.  

_That’s just how they work. Totally normal. It means nothing._

_Don’t think too deeply about it._

Except that he literally searched for her features.  They were right there in the tags, ' _petite', 'ebony_ ', both purple.

_Too late._

* * *

This girl was a favorite judging from all the visits to her page, and those leanings, that she had been so curious about were now quite clear. These weren’t mere musings or a small fantasy.  He wanted her or someone very much like her in his bed.

Abbie felt nauseous.   To know that her facade, -as close as he could get to it, at least was being used in this way. She was self-aware enough to know she had no right to judge to feel invaded, not when she was the one doing the invading, the non-consensual digging into this man’s private fantasies.  

Still.

There was shock, confirmation of what they’d so carefully flirted around, and fear settled in the pit of her stomach like a heavy brick.

Because it was _easier_   when she could tell herself the lies, that a man like him would have no real interest in a woman like her, _a black female lieutenant_ -like no one he would have encountered in his day, and that anything more would be a complication that would weaken their shared pursuit.

Ichabod needed a woman to protect, to keep in a safe velvet box.  That is how he tried to keep his now-deceased wife, after-all.

Perhaps, like Ichabod, there had been a time when she had wanted to convince herself that she could be.  That trap of a lie, being wanted for qualities she was not and did not wish to possess contributed to her eventual psychopathy.  Who knows?

Abbie, however, lived by her ambitions, her work as avoidance of unpleasant things. Those ambitions shifted higher now as Witness, but they still served a similar purpose.  She needed them to serve a similar purpose.

The truth was, even as the ambition remained pretty much the same in focus, her heart, her traitor heart yearned for more from the bearded man who dug his way out of enchanted dirt, who had somehow become her constant companion, the man with the softest blue eyes she’d ever seen on a person.

Crane had smirked, sassed, and eloquently soothed his lanky way into her hardened heart somehow.

That was affecting her most.

Confirmation that he wanted her made this whole Witness thing _harder_ , not easier.

...More complications.

She had the poker-face of a profiler but could she look him in the eye knowing for certain that he had lost himself multiple times, had found pleasure in imagining her lost under his own ministrations?   

_You have visited this page eleven times._

She assumed that was pretty infrequent for a man of this day actually, but for Crane? And what she knew of him, she could imagine the heaping piles of guilt of he lay upon himself before surrendering to temptation and relief.

Said page was that same girl, blindfolded, restrained, her legs splayed apart, while her partner played with her, used toys on her, -his hands, his mouth, and his penis.  She came three times, and from what she could see, she was either Oscar-calibre at faking it or those orgasms were real.

She swallowed dryly when it was over, hyper-aware of the throb, the dampness between her legs.

“Okay. I’m done. This is what I get for snooping.”

She shut it down with trembling hands and went home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've added this short bit. I may or may not expand this further.

That night he haunted her dreams.

Not the courtly gentleman she’d dreamed of before, kissing her hand and requesting the honor of a formal dance, -a chaste side-by-side sweep of movement beneath the moonlight...

No, this Ichabod took her to heights she had not reached before, was intuitive to her needs here just as he was when they fought demons together.

...His voice, his scrutable stare, the pressure and precision of his hands and body... This layered with imagery from that bookmarked video she'd seen.   Abbie was not the submissive type, but in her dream she submitted to Ichabod's whims, to having him draw her pleasure from her as he pleased.

She could almost feel the sharp angles of his hips pressed between her thighs, feel the tickle of his beard upon her face, belly, her slick cleft…

His eloquent baritone whispering ‘Leftenant’ mid-exertion.

She awoke gasping and frustrated.

Later that morning, when she picked him up from the cabin for their newest case, she hoped her tired eyes revealed nothing of her guilt. She hoped he assumed that she had dreamed of past cases.

That had happened before, after-all, to them both. They discussed it, unloaded and shared the burdens, the particularly nasty, personal cases, the losses. 

But once they got to the archives and he opened his laptop, things rapidly shifted.

She had been so dazed by what she had seen the night before, that she made a rookie mistake.

She had not erased her own history either.

Ichabod keyed in his password and the last page she had been on flickered to life and Ichabod quickly shut the screen, in a near echo of the way he had done so the first time he stumbled upon an adult website.

He glanced in her direction and she did her best to avoid his eyes, giving herself away.

“I... believe you have found your way onto my personal computing device despite Miss Jenny’s assurances that a password would make it safe from such intrusion.” he said, his voice a monotone.

_I shall not trust in modern computing locking rituals again._

“And you have seen… _Oh dear_. -that I am a wretched bearer of perverse, debase thoughts about...”  

He breathed deeply and closed his eyes, his hands unconsciously smoothing over the lid of the closed laptop.  

He stood and approached her, his head inclined, his eyes on the floor before her.  She’d never seen him look so mortified, so embarrassed.

“I have done you and our partnership great dishonor. You must know, that I hold the utmost respect for your person. I must apolo-”

Abbie shook her head and put up her hand, standing to look up at his face.

“-Stop.”

“First.  Damn near all people with a sex drive and access to an internet connection these days, look at porn.  Congratulations, you’re a normal guy.

Second… _I_ hacked into _your_ computer.  I was in the wrong.  Instant karma for me, I’d say, seeing that.

Third. We work in close proximity with one another in a risky job. We’ve saved each other from the brink countless times. We care for each other deeply.  It was bound follow us into our fantasies.”  

_“Our?-”_

“I can’t control my subconscious Crane, and I’m human, just like you.  You’re a good-looking guy. Of course, I’ve thought about... -I may or may _not_ have a skinny white guy pornstar or two bookmarked in my adult folder.”

She smiled in what she hoped was a disarming way. It faded as his gaze remained serious and steady with her own.

He was looking at her in that way, again.

She was trying to keep this light, dammit.  

She was absolutely sure, he was seeing everything she would have hidden with that maddeningly astute gaze of his.  

He cocked his head, wet his lips. He _radiated_ barely tethered restraint. His hands tightened into fists behind him.

“I apologize for invading your privacy, for looking at your laptop without permission.” she said in a desperate attempt to break the heated silence between them, though her voice came as a shaky rasp of breath.  

He smiled slightly, assuringly, not mockingly… He could have pulled that bit of thread she’d allowed to trail out from her until it all unraveled, until they were both forced to confront-

Their lips were mere millimeters apart.  “I shall endeavour to be more mindful of where I set my things...and change my password to random letters, symbols, and numbers as Miss Jenny rightly suggested...”

_Soft._

They were sharing the same breath.

Abbie gently tapped his lapel with two small fingers, gaining the space she needed so that what almost- _wouldn't._

It didn't.

Abbie let out a breath she did not know she had been holding.

"Crane."  She breathed and shook her head.

Ichabod straightened once more, his posture stiff as a board. 

His eyebrows knitted together slightly and he too let out a held breath.

He blinked rapidly, inclined his head slightly in deference to her choice, before walking past her.

_"Miss Mills."_

* * *

**  
**  



End file.
